3. Guillermo de Humboldt, referring to the Bizkaians, that is,
to the Basques, said that this people make use of, in general,
complex signs for ideas that the other languages express with
simple signs, such as moon, sun, etc.

But, do we know exactly the etymology of the names of the
sun in the
Indo-Germanic languages? Comparing the English
sun with the Icelandic sol,
the Sanskrit sura, surya, the Vedic súvar,
etc., is not equivalent to giving the
etymology. Sun is, as an etymologic dictionary says
(Chambers'), ``an
old word of unknown etymology.'' As to the complexity, the
Basque
eki `sun' does not appear much more complex than,
e.g., the Latin sol.
If it is argued that eki is probably the result of a
contraction, we have
the same in the case of Latin and Icelandic. (Walde, Pictet).

What do the names of the sun mean? To discover their
primitive meaning
and the semantic evolution, we must reach to the Vedic
súvar, svàr
`sun, light, sky'. In the other languages of the large Indo-
European
family the names of the sun usually are meros signs that don't
define the expressed object
[+].

4. What are the names of the sun in Basque? There does not
exist, far
from it, the variety of Sanskrit, but on the other hand the
phonetic
variants abound. There are two groups that can be formed:
eguzki and
eki. Variants of the first are: euzki,
eguski, eguzku, iguzki, iuzki,
iruzki, iruski, iluzki, iluski,
iduzki, and eguzgi. All of these forms
are distributed throughout the various Basque dialects of
Spain and France
[+].
Dechepare employs the form ydusqui(a) next to
iguzqui(a). Eguzquia
is one of the Basque words cited by Lucius Marineus Siculus.
(Vinson).
The group eki is also composed of ekhi and
iki. In the Lapurdian of
Bardos the sun is also called ekheerri. The form
ekherri, which is
encountered in Duvoisin, properly means `heat of the sun'.

As much as from the phonetic point of view as the
etymological, the
priority probably corresponds to eguzki. Gavel, even
recognizing that
at first glance this form seems the more primitive,
admits equally the possibility that the g comes from
r or d, and that the
change would have happened under the influence of a false
analogy with
egun `day'. Uhlenbeck asks if we must partir of
r or else of g. And
adds: ``For the moment it cannot be determined what relation
remains
between the diverse forms.'' But studying the Basque vowels,
he
cites as a probable alternate case e: i,
eguzki: iguzki, iruzki. Later,
when treating the alternation of i and e, he says:
``Dans la plupart des
cas la priorité semble appartenir à l' e, mais à cet égard
il nous reste
beaucoup de doutes. Parfois l'étymologie nous donne la
certitude
souhaitée, p. ex... eguzki: iguzki 'soleil', mot duquel le
synonyme eki
peut à peine être séparé.''

The forms euzki, iuzki are explained perfectly
by the relaxation of
articulation since the consonants b, g, d,
r are subject in Basque.
This is the reason that they permute between themselves with
such
frequency and that they are confused in rapid and relaxed
pronunciation, leading in many cases to complete
suppression. (Gavel).
Something similar occurs in Spanish with the fricative
g in intervocalic
positions ( agua, aguardar) and the d of
participles terminating in
-ado, which in familiar conversation is greatly reduced
or lost.
(Navarro Tomas).

In regards to the group eki, there exists a rare
unanimity in
considering their form as the result of a contraction. Even
Novia de
Salcedo is inclined to believe that it is the same eguzki,
syncopated.
Vinson also has it originating from eguzki, while
Schuchardt presents us
with the hypothetical form *egu-ki, from which
eku derives. Apriaz says
that it could also proceed from *egu-gi, *egu-ki,
tomando a egu in its
primitive sense; ekhi would be before eguzki.

5. The priority between eguzki and eki could be
discussed. But it also
could be that none of them was the primitive name of the son.
As Schuchardt said: ``in the course of time many Basque
words have
been lost, for which reason its current vocabulary does not
lend a
sufficient cooperation.'' Lacombe, in the conclusion of his study of
the names of
`tree', says that it is not possible to establish conclusions over the
Basque
mentality in ancient times, because Basque is only known
from a very
recent epic and has lost a great number of words. For his
part,
Eleizalde recognizes that in Basque ``the lexicon does not
correspond to
the importance of the conjugation, since it is natural that
during the
decline of a language the most accidental part, which is the
lexicon,
is lost the most.''